takes place;
a detachment of the revolutionary army joins the procession; the men are
armed with axes; on reaching the cemetery, the better to celebrate the
funeral, "they cut down all the crosses (over the graves) and make
a bonfire of them, while the carmagnole ends this ever memorable
day."[33153]--Sometimes the scene, theatrical and played by the light
of flambeaux, makes the actors think that they have performed an
extraordinary and meritorious action, "that they have saved the
country." "This very night," writes the agent at Bordeaux,[33154] nearly
three thousand men have been engaged in an important undertaking, with
the members of the Revolutionary Committee and of the municipality at
the head of it. They visited every wholesale dealer's store in town and
in the Faubourg des Chartrons, taking possession of their letter-books,
sealing up their desks, arresting the merchants and putting them in
the Seminiare.... Woe to the guilty!"--If the prompt confinement of an
entire class of individuals is a fine thing for a town, the seizure of
a whole town itself is still more imposing. Leaving Marseilles with
a small army,[33155] commanded by two sans-culottes, they surround
Martigne and enter it as if it were a mill. The catch is superb; in this
town of five thousand souls there are only seventeen patriots; the
rest are Federalists or Moderates. Hence a general disarmament
and domiciliary visits. The conquerors depart, carrying off every
able-bodied boy, "five hundred lads subject to the conscription, and
leave in the town a company of sans-culottes to enforce obedience."
It is certain that obedience will be maintained and that the garrison,
joined to the seventeen patriots, will do as they like with their
conquest.

In effect, all, both bodies and goods, are at their disposal, and they
consequently begin with the surrounding countryside, entering private
houses to get at their stores, also the farmhouses to have the grain
threshed, in order to verify the declarations of their owners and see if
these are correct: if the grain is not threshed out at once it will be
done summarily and confiscated, while the owner will be sentenced
to twelve months in irons; if the declaration is not correct, he is
condemned as a monopolist and punished with death. Armed with this
order,[33156] each band takes the field and gathers together not only
grain, but supplies of every description. "That of Grenoble, the agent
writes,[33157] does w